


but we know it could go away

by CC_Writes, Sroloc_Elbisivni



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: BROT3, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Missing Scenes, RvB Reverse Big Bang, Season 15, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, fic with art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 08:43:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12813861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CC_Writes/pseuds/CC_Writes, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sroloc_Elbisivni/pseuds/Sroloc_Elbisivni
Summary: Simmons wasn't really expecting Caboose to latch onto him, or to ask him for advice. He's trying his best. It's sort of working. Behind the scenes of Season 15.Fic for the RvB Reverse Big Bang challenge on Tumblr.





	but we know it could go away

Here was a beginning. It was not _the_ beginning—although you could certainly waste many hours arguing over what that was, if you chose—but it was, really, _a_ beginning. It was a beginning in an aftermath, a beginning in an ending, but it was a beginning nonetheless.

And this beginning, like many beginnings, was made of waiting.

* * *

 

After the ship had flown away (after everybody had left, but if Grif walked out to the beach it could be just another normal day where he was trying to escape everybody getting on his goddamn nerves, so _after the ship had flown away),_ Grif waited.

None of this felt real. Not the reporter showing up out of nowhere, not the greatest hits recap of everyone’s many idiocies, not Church being “back” and everyone going right back into Blue Team Problems—okay, that felt a little too real, but only because they’d all _done_ it so many goddamn times—none of it.

Not everyone else just…leaving. Not being able to just quit like that.

Had it always been that easy? Could he have just walked away from this bullshit at Blood Gulch? _“Uh, sorry sir, fuck that and also fuck you and fuck all of this.”_ He’d tried that, hadn’t he? He’d tried just about every trick in the book and written a few new ones trying to do just that.

And in the end, it was just as easy as…walking away.

Huh.

Now he was here, and they were gone.

 _“Fatass._ ”

“I said they were GONE,” Grif said, loudly, because he had _seen the ship leave_ , dammit. Simmons had been on it, which meant he was _there_ and not _here_ and he couldn’t be insulting Grif any more, all right?

After he had finished explaining this, the seagull on the rock in front of him blinked and then turned around.

“ _Private Grif! Quit communicating with the enemy!”_

“I seriously doubt Blue Team has taken to recruiting birds now, sir,” Grif said before he remembered that he’d quit. He didn’t have to deal with Sarge’s paranoia anymore. And, if he checked the clock, it turned out to be just about time for his pre-lunch nap.

He left the beach, hoping that Sarge and Simmons would have, for once in their lives, the common fucking decency to _leave him alone_. They’d done it already, hadn’t they? Better follow through, then.

* * *

 

After the reporter lady had chased him out of the room with the phone, and then out of the room with the machines, and then out of the room with the engine, and then out of the room with the phone again because he was starting to get hungry and Tucker was too busy swinging around his sword in the belly of the ship to call pizza like he usually did, she took Caboose into a room with some seats and a view of the stars and told him to stay put. Three times.

She had backed out of the room very slowly, watching him the whole time. He had waved.

Now Caboose was just sitting and waiting and watching the stars.

They were going by really fast, but the ones that were far away enough stuck around for longer. He started giving them names to pass the time.

That one could be Cindy, and that one could be Knuckles, and that one could be Freckles the third, and that one could be Andi, and that one could be tiniest Church because it looked kind of blue like—

No, nope, no more calling things Church anymore Caboose, because Church, real Church, was out there and they were going to find him and save him and then everything would be good forever again. And Church got mad when Caboose called things Church that weren’t Church. It didn’t help that so many things were Church.

That one could be Lulu. Yes.

Caboose ran out of names long before he ran out of stars, so he went to go find Wash. Wash would have more names for the stars. Wash had lots of names. Sometimes they were the bad names that he woke up screaming about, but if he gave those names to the stars, then the names would go far away and be left behind forever, right? So Wash could stop screaming about them.

Caboose didn’t remember that Wash was off finding planters with Carolina until he was halfway to the engine room.

He still wasn’t sure why Wash had to go look for planters, since everyone knew bad things happened when they all split up, but before he left Wash had explained that it was like when Caboose used to lose Freckles’ chip, or when Tucker was stupid and put all the cereal out by the beach because it was cold, and then forgot where he put it, so everyone had to start looking at opposite ends and then meet in the middle.

The whole galaxy was a lot bigger than the island. It would take a very long time to meet in the middle.

But—maybe it had been _planets_ Wash and Carolina were looking for, not planters. That would make more sense. They could go off and look for the planets Church might be on.

Caboose could help them! He was good at watching planets. He had watched Earth all the time when he was little, and it had never gone missing.

Yes. Caboose would help. Caboose would go find the room with the big map that showed _all_ the planets, even the ones that did not have people on them anymore, and then he would tell Wash and Carolina which ones he was watching so they could work faster.

“Caboose, what are you doing?”

Oh, Simmons. Simmons was good at watching things too. “Hello, Simmons! Do you want to help?”

“Help with _what_ , Caboose?” Simmons sounded mad. That was not fair. Maybe he was sad because Grif was not there, but he didn’t get to be _mean_ about it. Caboose was sad because Church was not there, but he didn’t get—

Well, he only _sometimes_ —

“Tucker did it,” Caboose said, automatically, and then had to shake his head, because he was going to do this, not Tucker, and then when Church got back Caboose could tell him all about how much help he had been finding him. Oh! Simmons could do that too.

“I’m just going to go watch the planets,” Caboose said. “Wash and Carolina are looking for planets, and if I am looking for planets, then together we can be done _so much faster_. And then Church will be back!”

“They’re not looking for planets, idiot. They know where the planets are. They’re looking for _freelancers_ on the planets. And you’re _not there_ , so you can’t help. Don’t you listen to anything?”

Caboose stood very still to think about that. “Oh.” He held his gun tighter. “Well. You don’t have to be so _mean_ about it.”

“I—I’m not being _mean_ , I just—” Simmons sounded like he was looking for a word, so Caboose let him look. Caboose had trouble finding words sometimes too, but he was not dumb enough to look for them while he was still talking.

Simmons couldn’t find the right words, so he gave up and didn’t say anything. Caboose found all the words he was looking for before he said anything.

“I just want to help find Church.”

Simmons looked away. “I know you do, Caboose.”

Caboose ended up leaving Simmons there while he went back to the room with the window to watch the stars. The reporter lady came back five minutes after he did.

When he asked her if she wanted to name stars with him, she said no.

Simmons didn’t come by either.

Caboose still didn’t have any more names for stars, so he thought about other things instead. Typewriters. Freckles. Church. The first thing they would do with Church when they got him back to base. What Grif was probably doing on base.

Hm. Caboose did not have Church right now. Simmons did not have Grif right now. That was because Grif was a mean butt who was bad at being friends and quit when people needed him. But that was not Simmons’ fault.

Caboose did not need a _new_ best friend. He still had his old best friend. Who was just. Not here right now. And neither was Simmons’ best friend. Simmons did not need a new best friend either. But Caboose could be a _good_ friend.

Yes. He could do that.

* * *

 

Simmons wasn’t lonely. He was…adjusting. Yeah. That’s what this was, right? He hadn’t had to do it in years, because he hadn’t been _alone_ in years. No one to nag at, no one to argue with, no one to have to handle and corral away from the food, no one to have to throw out of the bunk because they wouldn’t wash their filthy socks.

It had just been so long. He had forgotten what it was like. Temporary shock of adjustment. That was why he was tense. He kept expecting Grif to just be around the corner, or something, and jumped when he wasn’t.

Asshole. Scaring Simmons when he wasn’t even here.

What gave him the right to just fucking quit, anyways? It’s—they were—he’d never done it before.

That was a stupid reason to be upset. All of this was stupid. _Grif_ was stupid. Simmons couldn’t even see him, and he knew Grif was being stupid right now. That’s how stupid he was. Simmons could sense it.

Okay, _thinking_ about Grif was also stupid. So he was going to stop. Right now.

There. Easy. Mind over…mind. No thinking about—

Agh, idiot, he did it _again_. Okay. This time. Spreadsheets. Perfect time to work on spreadsheets. Just open up the app, and—

Okay, that one was a chore spreadsheet for the base and he’d just written “GRIF I SWEAR TO GOD” on every single block. Never mind then.

“Sneaking. Sneaking. Sneaking.”

Simmons waited thirty seconds to see if Caboose was going to sneak past before asking, “Caboose? Did you want something?”

“Yes. I want…a puppy.”

“I don’t have any puppies.” Simmons flicked to the next spreadsheet, which turned out to be a meal plan that he’d ended up filling with keysmashes. Fucking Grif. “Weren’t you doing something with stars?”

“Well, I was. But then I was done.”

“So you came…back?”

“Yes.”

Simmons figured if he gave it a few minutes, Caboose would get bored and go away.

His comm buzzed while he was looking for a spreadsheet that didn’t involve Grif. “ _Simmons. There seem to be rogue noodles roaming the base.”_

“Yes, sir. Good to know.”

_“Be on the alert! They could strike at any time. They’re in cahoots with that reporter lady. Cahoots!”_

“Yes, sir. Rogue noodles. Cahoots.”

“ _And don’t forget it!_ ”

Simmons took a deep breath as Sarge hung up. Judging by the last time Sarge had refused to sleep, they still had about two days before he passed out and the rest of them could stop having to deal with his hallucinations.

“If _Grif_ were here, he could just tell Sarge he’d eat the noodles. Then he could find something else to freak out about,” Simmons grumbled.

“There are noodles?”

“No, Caboose. No noodles. Just Sarge, being paranoid again.”

“Oh. So we just have to shake him, and then everything will be clear!”

Simmons had to stop looking through his spreadsheets to think about that one. “…Caboose. _Paranoid_. Not Polaroid.”

“You just said the same thing.”

“Polaroid is the photos you shake. Paranoid is the way Grif gets when he forgets where he put his Oreos and thinks someone ate them.”

“All dark and blurry so you have to shake him.”

“You know what? Let’s go with that.”

Simmons’ comm went off again, so he didn’t have to try and reason with Caboose any more. It wasn’t even Sarge this time, either.

“ _Simmons. We’ve got a lock on our destination.”_

“That’s good to know, Ms. Andrews, but shouldn’t you be telling Sarge?”

“ _I tried, but Sarge accused me of being in cahoots with…spaghetti? I figured you’d actually listen.”_

“Yeah, he…yeah.”

“ _Anyway. We’re headed to Arcadia, on Lepthos-IV.”_

“Wait, wait, Arcadia? _That_ Arcadia?”

“ _Don’t worry, it’s safe to land on. The entire planet’s a ghost town now._ ”

“Yaaaaaaay.”

“ _What was that?”_

“Oh, nothing, nothing.”

“ _…Right. Have you seen Caboose?”_

 _“_ Uh…” Simmons looked up, but while he had been talking with the reporter, Caboose had vanished. “Nope. Not lately. No Caboose here.”

“ _Great.”_

She hung up. Simmons sighed. Looked like now there was nothing to do but wait for a trip to a giant ghost town of a planet with a hallucinating leader and less backup than usual.

Great.

* * *

 

As you can see, there was a beginning, and really, it was made of waiting. And because there was a beginning, it follows that there had to be some middle afterwards, but you know how that went.  
  
Most of it, anyways. The messy parts.   
  
Secrets, and new history, and new people who call themselves friends. Lies. Traps. Fighting. There’s always fighting, in this kind of story.

So we’ll just skip ahead.

Not to the end of the story. We couldn’t go quite that far. And it would only be _an_ end, just like there could only be _a_ beginning. Nothing ever really ends. People just get tired of telling the story, or tired of hearing it, and ends come, as they will.

We’re just going to skip past all the messy parts, until we get back to the waiting.

* * *

 

There was a ship, again. Wash was not on the ship, again. They were looking for things, again.

Caboose was waiting, again.

The reporter lady was not following him around this time.  She was busy walking in circles and muttering in the phone room. Tucker was busy walking in circles and muttering in the engine room. Sarge was muttering but not walking in circles.

Caboose had tried walking in circles, but he had just gotten dizzy. He didn’t have anything to mutter about, either.

He didn’t even have any more names for the stars.

“Caboose?”

“Hello,” Caboose said, because Simmons was his friend and you had to be polite to your friends even if he did not want to see anyone right now.

“Are you….still talking to the stars?”

“No. I’m out of names.” Caboose watched them go by. “And I do not know if I have named them already. It would be mean. To forget their names.”

“Oh.” Simmons didn’t say anything to that.

Caboose didn’t really know why Simmons was there. Simmons had a best friend. His best friend was back. Even though Simmons had acted like he didn’t care. Did he care more? Was that why his best friend was back?

Caboose hadn’t cared about Locus. Caboose had forgotten about Locus. But Locus was back.

Maybe caring wasn’t the problem.

“So…” Simmons said. “Earth. That’s a big trip. I haven’t been back to Earth in ages.”

“I’ve never been to Earth,” Caboose said.

“You haven’t?”

“Yeah, I am from the moon. We did not go to Earth. Well, my sister went. But she didn’t come back. I don’t think that counts.” Caboose tried to remember if Anna had ever said anything. She might have. If it was nice. If it was like it looked like in the pictures, with trees and flowers and lots of front yards for dogs, where people didn’t have to worry about airlocks or domes or suits or anything. If it had been nice, Anna would have said something, wouldn’t she? She would have told them, so they could come visit her, and stay, and all live on Earth together. “She never sent anything home, so…I don’t think she liked it there.”

“Oh. Well, I’m from Earth.”

“I guess you did not like it there either. You never sent anything to me.”

“What? No, no, I liked it! Earth was—Earth was great. There was—oxygen, and, and, math classes, and—it was great.”

“Okay. If you say so.”

“I do say so.”

“Okay.”

“You can stop saying “okay” now.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t know what I was expecting.”

Caboose let a lot more stars go by. Simmons knew things. Simmons had known that Church wasn’t coming back. But he hadn’t said anything. But he had come with them. But he had tried to help on the Scary Planet. But he might not know. But he might know. “Can I ask you something?”

* * *

 

Simmons blinked. Well, he hadn’t been expecting that.

“Sure?”

“You said there is no such thing as ghosts.”

“Well, scientifically speaking, no. No there isn’t.”

“So people don’t come back. They are gone forever. Like Temple said.”

 _Shit_. “Look, Caboose, Temple’s an evil jerk. You can’t listen to him.”

“But he was right. Church isn’t coming back. For-ev-er.”

“…No, Caboose. He’s not.”

“So, if—if there are no ghosts, like you said on the Scary Planet—and people don’t come back—how do you say goodbye to them?”

“I guess…you don’t. Sometimes you just don’t get to say goodbye.” Simmons felt stupid saying the words, but—well. Were they _wrong_?

Caboose was silent for a really long time, and then he said, very loudly, “That is _stupid_.”

“I’m—I’m sorry.”

“That is _stupid_ . That is _bad_. That is—a bad and stupid system and whoever made it should feel bad.”

Well, _shit_ . Simmons had _really_ screwed this one up.

“Caboose—” Simmons tried to turn to face Caboose, tried to make it easier to talk to him, but Caboose was turning around and stomping away and Simmons knew from _painful_ experience that he wasn’t strong enough to stop Caboose, much less an angry Caboose.

“ _Bad!_ ” Caboose yelled before stomping out of the room and down the hall.

Simmons was left there, alone, feeling like he had just screwed this up. A lot.

“Idiot. Should know better than to try and talk to Caboose.”

“Why are you talking to yourself in the dark?”

“Yah!” Simmons flinched. Grif’s voice had come out of nowhere. “Grif! Why are you sneaking up on me?”

“Gee, _sor-ry_. Someone’s all twitchy.”

Simmons turned back to the window. “I—shut up.”

He waited for Grif to snark at him, or call him a dumbass, or something else, but nothing happened. Had he left?

When Simmons looked back over, Grif was still there. He was turning to look out the window when Simmons looked. Simmons thought Grif might have been watching him, but…no, that was stupid.

“What do you want, Grif?” Simmons asked, when he couldn’t stand it any more.

“I mean, some Oreos would be nice.”

“Very funny. I mean _here_ . Now.” Simmons tried not to sound bitter. That would be stupid. He wasn’t bitter. Grif was gone, but now he was back. So that was all _fine_ . Grif was probably just bored without Locus around. His new _partner_ now.

“I don’t know,” Grif said, finally.

When Simmons turned back around, Grif was gone.

Well…fine. Simmons didn’t need him anyways.

* * *

 

Grif walked away from the viewing room. Simmons, in the middle of what looked like it would be a _raging_ bitchfest, made eight. Sarge, Tucker, Donut, Carolina, reporter lady, annoying camera guy, Lopez—wait, did Lopez count as a whole person if he was just a head?

Whatever. He was there, that was the point. Simmons would be fine. Hate glue was doing its work, as usual. Only one left was Caboose.

They needed to get, like, a whistle or something for the guy. Or a leash. Blue Team clearly wasn’t in any kind of shape to keep track of him, so of fucking course Red Team would have to pick up the slack. This was like Valhalla all over again. Only this time with more spaceships. And enemies. And Donut.

“Caboose,” Grif called out, heading deeper into the bowels of the ship. “Cabooooooose, come out and play.” Seriously, where could six feet of big dumb blue soldier in armor even hide?

It took him a while to spot the armored legs sticking out of a crate. “Caboose?”

“Caboose is not here. Sorry.”

“Right, right. Of course.” Grif sat on the floor next to the container. “If you see him, could you tell him I’m looking for him?”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Guess I want to make sure everyone’s still here.”

“Everyone is not still here. Wash is gone. Church is gone. Locus is gone. Doc is gone. Sister—”

Grif winced and cut _that_ right off. “Everyone who got on the ship, I mean. We’re losing people pretty fast.”

“Yes.” There was a pause, and then, “Some of them are not coming back.”

Grif pulled off his helmet, with a sigh. “Yeah. Some of them aren’t coming back.”

“What do you do? When people aren’t coming back? For good?”

Grif flicked one finger against his helmet, listening to the _ping_ as he stared at the ceiling. “Move on, I guess.”

“But what if you can’t. What if you weren’t supposed to move on.”

“We’re always supposed to move on. It’s why we’re still alive.” Grif  slammed a box over the little voice in the corner of his head that was whispering _liar_ . Whispering _mistake_. “We stick around. We count people. We feel sad until we’re not sad anymore.”

“That is stupid.”

“Yeah.”

“Being sad is stupid.”

“Yeah.”

I do not want to be sad.”

Grif blew out a long, slow breath, wishing for a cigarette. _You and me both._ “I don’t think you get a choice.”

“What happens to you when you die?”

“I guess it’s one of life’s great mysteries.”

“Simmons said you would say that.” Grif blinked. “He talked about you a lot. And then he said he didn’t.”

“Huh.” That was. Something.

“Some people say it’s heaven,” Grif said, finally. It didn’t seem real likely that Church was a candidate for the place, even if it did exist, but what the hell. Maybe the asshole had earned _something_. “Where you go after you die.”

“Is it nice there?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Do people come back from heaven?”

Grif leaned his head all the way back, watching a slow drop of condensation trickle its way down the wall, from pipe to pipe. “I don’t think so.”

“I hope…” Caboose trailed off. “…it is nice there. Wherever Church is.”

 _Me, too_.

“Well, thanks for the chat, mysterious box,” Grif said, because that was _way_ more than enough of this kind of talk for one day. Week. Lifetime. Whatever. “I’m going to go look for Caboose now.”

“Grif?”

He paused, in the middle of putting his helmet on, and weighed whether or not to answer. _Ah, hell_. “Yeah?”

“Do you think we’re gonna be okay?”

 _Ah,_ hell.

“I don’t know.”

* * *

 

That was a middle. A while ago, there was a beginning.

So of course, there had to be an end. Or shall we say, _another_ end.

You’ve already seen _an_ end, of course, involving a time machine and goodbyes and reunions and an excessive amount of drama. We’re going to skip ahead, again, to somewhere there is, once again, waiting.

In this kind of story, there’s always waiting. But this is the better kind of waiting, where no one knows what bad things might be coming. This is the slow, quiet kind of waiting. This is waiting to be home.  

* * *

 

It was very quiet, afterwards.

Actually, it was very noisy because Kai and the lieutenants were thrilled to find out the rest of them were still alive and apparently ready to throw a party at the drop of a hat.

Simmons had tried to be friendly and social but that had gone about as well as it always had and then Kai had challenged him to beer pong for…her brother’s honor? Or something? And then Donut had shrieked and started to talk about the Temple of Procreation mess and Simmons had to leave. Very quickly.

Down here, in the troop hanger of the ship, it was very quiet. And there were lots of seats along the wall. He’d just settle in, try to see if he had any good Battlestar Galactica episodes still loaded up in his memory files, and maybe get a nap.

He was at it for about ten minutes before admitting defeat because he hadn’t been able to update his files since before they landed on Chorus and that meant he’d seen all of these a billion times and was thoroughly sick of all of them. He ended up just pulling off his helmet and sighing.

 _God_ he had to get some new shows.

He looked up at the _clang_ of an approaching footstep, wondering if he’d need to have to bolt to get away and hide from Kai again, but it turned out it was just Caboose.

“Hey, Caboose,” Simmons said, cautiously, because the last time he’d seen Caboose alone had been on the deck of Ms. Andrews’ ship when he was getting really upset about death and people being gone. Which Simmons couldn’t _blame_ him for, but still.

“Hello,” Caboose said, sounding kind of morose. He was holding a blanket.

“Shouldn’t you be at the party?” Simmons couldn’t help but ask, because Caboose had probably been the most excited about seeing the lieutenants again. Not that the rest of them hadn’t been happy, but Caboose had been alone in trying to physically lift Andersmith in a hug.

“Yeah, well…I was. But then I was very tired. And very sad. And everyone was having a good time, and it did not seem like a good place to be tired and sad, and then you were gone so I thought I would go see what you are doing. And it turns out you are being tired and sad too. So I thought we could do that together. With a blanket.”

Simmons wondered if he should object, and then kind of gave up. “You know what? Sure.”

Caboose shuffled over and dumped the blanket on Simmons’ lap before pulling off his own helmet and sitting on the bench next to him. He pulled up a corner of the blanket to wrap around his shoulders, leaving a corner draped over Simmons’ thigh. Then he gave a big sigh and leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes.

* * *

 

Caboose did not like being sad. Being sad was like being up very late at night, when all he wanted was to go to sleep, but he could not go to sleep because sleeping meant he would have to see lots of bad things and lots of scary people, but he was very tired and no one else was up to make hot chocolate and he wasn’t supposed to touch the microwave so all he could do was sit at the table and feel cold and empty and lonely.

But Grif had said that you were sad until you were not, and Caboose was still sad, so he did not think he was not yet.

It was easier to be sad down here, with a blanket and another person being quiet and tired, and better than at the party where everyone was happy and excited and would want him to be too.

Caboose had been happy and excited. He was done now. Now he was sad and tired and that meant he should not be at a party.

Oh, wait. He had a little bit of happy left.

Caboose patted at Simmons to get his attention. “Simmons. Simmons. Simmons.”

“Yeah, Caboose?”

“I am a little bit happy. That you have your best friend back. It is good that you have your best friend back.”

“Thanks, Caboose.”

“You are welcome.” Caboose shifted against the wall, getting more comfortable. “I hope you get to do lots of best friend things now.”

“Me too.”

Caboose pulled his legs up onto the bench too, and yawned. Being sad was a lot like being tired. “Simmons? You are not going to go anywhere. Right?”

“Nope.” Caboose felt something pat his hair. “Not going anywhere, Caboose.”

“That is good. We should keep the people we have left.”

Caboose was asleep before he could hear Simmons whisper back, “Yeah.”

* * *

 

There were a few more people to count now, but Grif still had them all. All except Caboose and Simmons. Again.

This time, when he got away from the party—and he loved Kai, he really did, even if he would never ever let anyone else know, but he could _not_ deal with a party right now—he found the two missing people together, down in the troop seating.

Caboose was asleep, a blanket bundled around his shoulders, leaning against Simmons. Simmons was starting to look a little squished.

“Little help here?” Simmons asked when he caught Grif staring.

Grif snorted, but he went over and helped Simmons pry himself out from under the big lug. Caboose just slid further down the wall, curling up on the bench, and ended up with his head resting on Simmons’ leg.

He may have _looked_ a lot smaller when he was asleep, but he weighed just as much.

“You didn’t go back to Blue Team, did you?” Grif asked, just to have something to say.

“Nah. He just kind of latched on to me.”

“Well. Good.” And then Grif didn’t really know what to say, so he just sat down on the bench next to Simmons and pulled off his helmet, kicking it under the bench. “Got another blanket?”

“Nope.”

“Shame.” Grif scratched at his head, careful not to get the one streak of red that he had from the transplant forever ago caught in his gloves.

When he looked over, Simmons was just kind of…petting Caboose’s head.

“I don’t think Sarge will let us keep him, even if you promise to walk him.”

Simmons snorted halfway through a yawn. “Yeah, fat chance. He’s going back to Blue Base as soon as we touch down.”

“Well, good.” Grif settled in a bit more, enjoying the quiet. “I mean, I’m not against adopting, but I always figured it would wait until we actually got out of service.”

Simmons didn’t say anything back.

Wait. _Shit_. Did he—

There was a soft _thunk_ as Simmons’ head dropped to rest against his shoulder. He was out like a light.

Grif sighed in relief, because just because he meant to _say_ something didn’t mean he meant for Simmons to _hear_ him. He wrapped one arm around Simmons’ shoulders to hold him up, and listened to Caboose sigh in his sleep and snuggle down a bit more.

He looked around, just to make sure there was no one watching, because Kai was already ready to give  Simmons three kinds of shovel talk and Donut was probably feeding her all kinds of gossip right now, before dropping a quick, furtive kiss against Simmons’ head.

His hair smelled weird, because none of them had taken a shower in like, two weeks, but Grif didn’t care. This was fine.

Grif closed his eyes, and settled in, letting his head drop down to rest against Simmons. Everyone who was supposed to be on this ship was still on the ship. They were done with Blue Team bullshit for today. It was quiet down here, and the fluorescent lights were old enough that there was a soft, dusty glow falling over everything. They had nowhere to be, and nothing to do.

There were worse places for a nap.

  


**Author's Note:**

> And we're done. Not bad for a nine-day fic, if I do say so myself. :D 
> 
> Had too much going on back in August to sign up for the Reverse Bang at the start, but I threw my hat into the ring to pinch-hit write and got lucky enough to work with the LOVELY [Chaos-child](cc-sketchbook.tumblr.com) on Tumblr and write for her GORGEOUS art. Check out her other stuff if you have a minute!
> 
> Thanks as always to the Fic War Mods for all the tremendous work they put in to organizing this event and all the others! 
> 
> Fic title from [ here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dDbSyfU_04) Couldn't resist, not sorry. 
> 
> I'm also on [Tumblr](sroloc--elbisivni.tumblr.com) if you'd like to drop me a line!


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